


Punishment and Forgiveness

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Dominion (TV)
Genre: Claiming, Established Relationship, M/M, Role Reversal, Rough Sex, soul bind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-12 11:38:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4477898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He shifts, enough to press closer to Michael, enough to push a breath from him and inhale it himself. </i>
</p><p><i>“What creatures in any plane do we know better than each other? We are </i>twins<i>, Michael. We are one soul between two forms. I cannot be you but I can take this burden from you, carry it for you - it would still be upon your soul, Father would still see it as yours. Because it will be. I will be. I am.”</i></p><p>Following the scene in The Narrow Gate where Michael gives up his desire to kill, and Gabriel takes it up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Punishment and Forgiveness

**Author's Note:**

> [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/) beta'd this like a boss, thank you bb :D

"Please."

Michael always looked younger when he asked for something. His eyes would widen, his lips purse and then part. Gabriel can recall every single time his brother had asked something of him, and every single time he could not deny him.

Except this.

"I would sooner take my own life," he whispers, watching the way Michael’s brows furrow in displeasure, in desperate need to atone for his sin. A sin he had committed willingly, knowing it was their Father's will, and yet -

He is a child, still young in his creation. They both are, still prone to taking orders as far as their limits would allow. Michael the Sword and Gabriel the Voice and Heart in counterpart. He has never denied his twin anything at all, but he will ardently deny him this.

“Stand,” Gabriel says, hand extended. Michael’s fingers close to fists against his thighs.

“Had you seen them, you would not be so forgiving.”

“Michael.”

“Have you heard a mother’s agony as her child is killed before her? Her life forfeit in a single breath, howled to the very heavens from which that punishment came. I have, and I have savored it as though it were a hymn,” he whispers. “But this - what happened tonight -”

Michael’s jaw snaps tight and he swallows. Gabriel reaches for his arm, but the younger jerks it away, leveling a dark gaze on his elder.

“Of course you wouldn’t understand,” he whispers. “Mighty Gabriel taking dictation from Father and passing notes to those of us who do not have the privilege to abstain. Mighty Gabriel pushing bloodless pieces around a board from his own self-righteous pedestal. Mighty Gabriel -”

The strike comes almost welcome, if Michael’s expression is anything to judge by. Brows furrowed in pain even as his lips part on a trembling inhale. He does not challenge the reprimand. When he turns his eyes bright to his brother again they are wider, darker.

"Again," he whispers.

"Do you think I would not take your place had I the choice, little brother?" Gabriel hisses, hand curling into a fist at his side so he doesn't lash out again. It is rare they squabble this way, rare they are not evenly matched. "Take the horrors you have to witness and let fall by a command you cannot even hear? In a heartbeat, Michael, I would save you that."

Michael swallows, eyes seeking between Gabriel’s before he parts his lips again. The blood is drying against his skin, he can feel it pulling. 

"Again," he breathes. Before him, Gabriel drops to his knees and grasps his hair tight, the other hand against his throat as though to restrain, but he feels nothing more than the pulse of this mortal form speed beneath his hand.

"Be still," he says, thumb stroking beneath the stubbled jaw, seeking the sensitive place he has found unfurls Michael’s wings to shuddering tautness when they rest tangled together. "Shall I forgive you?"

As blood seeps to the dust-thick carpets beneath them from the remains of the angel beside, so darkness covers the blue of Michael’s eyes. He closes them and leans into his brother’s touch. He tongues against his lip, made swollen from the sharp slap, before parting them against Gabriel’s palm.

The taste of iron spreads throughout his mouth.

“Can you?” Michael asks, dropping from his knees to sit on his hip instead. His armor creaks as he lifts his hands in supplication, framing Gabriel’s fingers to keep them close. “I should have been here when it happened. Not there, not doing that - a flood to snuff them all and I could have been here to stop the one who came for you.”

Gabriel considers. The ease with which striking his brother had come, the ease in allowing him to take the grace of another angel... there is a freedom to it that Gabriel has never experienced before. He can feel the heat of blood still against his hand, can feel the sting against his knuckles where he had struck Michael across the face.

He flexes his hand and regards it, turning his eyes to his brother only when Michael allows breath to escape slowly through his lips.

"What is forgiveness if not sharing a burden?" he asks Michael gently. "What is vindication but taking that burden from another to shoulder it yourself?"

The hand in Michael’s hair tightens incrementally and he forces his brother to look at the blood he spilled from their kind. He holds him there until Michael closes his eyes with a sigh.

"I am done," he says. Gabriel leans in to press warm lips to Michael’s temples, sighing in the smell of him, bleeding and bloodied, sweaty and exhausted. It makes the elder shiver, parting his lips wider.

"Perhaps we are never truly done," Gabriel replies, and letting his lips curve up, his tongue presses to the corner of his lips. "And we are one, are we not, brother?"

Michael’s eyes open wide once more. The words spread heat beneath sweat-damp armor and he tries to turn his head but finds himself still held in place. A grimace parts his lips over bared teeth as Gabriel’s gentle lips tease his ear but his hand holds Michael tight, long black hair wrapped around his older brother’s fist.

“You liked it,” Michael whispers. “In the distance even still you hear the cataclysm. Temples destroyed, bodies beaten to nothing but a smear across the stones - ” he gasps and brings his hands down to the floor to steady himself as Gabriel drags him near.

“Even as Sodom burns and Gomorrah crumbles,” snarls the younger. “And after everything of which you’ve accused me. Oh, how you wish you had gone to play with us.”

A hum, low, closer to a growl than Michael has ever heard his brother slip before, and Gabriel brings his other hand to Michael’s throat again, feeling the pulse quicken, the heat push to sweat against smooth, bloodied skin. He does not squeeze, but he could.

Michael knows he could.

“We are mirrors, little brother,” Gabriel reminds him. “I could hardly have gone when you did, could hardly have played as Father’s Sword is allowed. How could I steal your toys?”

Long ago, in their first eyrie together, the two of them and Uriel and Raphael, squirming like puppies in a pile of feathers and warmth, Gabriel had curled around his brother and shielded him with his wings, from any sort of harm. From play-fights between the other twins, from the wind and storms. He had protected, because he had been told to protect.

His duty and his due, a job to be proud of, as Michael was used to his full potential.

And what better mercy to protect? What kinder cruelty?

“I did promise,” Gabriel murmurs against him. “To protect you from everything. Father’s wrath and anyone else’s, anything that would cause you pain, Michael. As this does, now.”

And just as stubborn as when they were first made, Michael tries to squirm away and sighs in heavy relief and breathlessness alike when Gabriel drags him closer. He splays his hands against the hardened leather cuirass, he parts his lips against Gabriel’s jaw. They close again to suck softly, a lingering kiss, no more out of place than the blood and sweat between them.

“And yourself?” Michael demands, before the sharp press of his teeth against Gabriel’s throat finds his bloody hand tightening enough to stutter his pulse. Michael shoves against Gabriel’s chest and jerks his neck free, mindless of the scrapes that bead blood in the wake of his older brother’s nails. He catches himself on his hands, a sandaled foot raised to keep Gabriel at bay.

“You speak not of promises, you speak of madness. I am His weapon,” he insists, blinking past images of horror and holocaust that burn behind his eyes. “And if I feel pain, it is because our Father wanted it that way. He showed me the beauty of blood spilled black against sand, the same way He showed Uriel the beauty in man’s creations. If I suffer, if I grieve, if there is guilt to bear then who are _you_ to take that from me?”

Gabriel allows himself to be held at bay, eyes traveling over the exhausted angry angel before him. This will pass, this anger always passes and something new comes forth. More righteousness, more determination, more indifference driving Michael to be the Sword that smites the hardest.

But maybe not today.

Gabriel leans closer, enough to bend Michael’s knee, lift his leg higher. He sets his hands on either side of his brother and simply regards him, angry and confused as he is.

“I am the only one who can,” he tells him. “The other side of the hourglass, Michael, to take the weight of the burdens you can no longer bear, or choose not to.”

“There is no choice.”

“There is with _us_.”

Michael’s muscles twitch, but the shove of his sandaled foot against Gabriel’s chest is weak and without intent. Gabriel leans closer and Michael’s lips bend in a snarl, keeping his foot planted for a moment more in warning without weaponry to back it up. They hold just so, until slowly Michael lets his foot slip aside to the packed earth beneath, and Gabriel comes down heavy atop him.

“You could be a righteous wrath,” Michael whispers, his voice quieting as his heart drums faster. “You have felt a bloody victory, you know the pleasure of it across your hands. But I can’t -”

“We can.”

“I can’t be you,” he says, gritted teeth and glistening eyes.

“You were not made to be,” Gabriel agrees, a hand coming up to stroke across blood-sticky locks that cling to Michael’s forehead. He ignores how his brother’s brows furrow, how he turns his head away. “Nor was I made to be you, and yet...”

He shifts, enough to press closer to Michael, enough to push a breath from him and inhale it himself. 

“What creatures in any plane do we know better than each other? We are _twins_ , Michael. We are one soul between two forms. I cannot be you but I can take this burden from you, carry it for you - it would still be upon your soul, Father would still see it as yours. Because it will be. I will be. I am.”

Michael’s breath stops. His eyes widen, pale verdant and shining, and his lips part in silence. There is no prayer to undo what Gabriel has claimed from him, there are no words that Michael can imagine in any language to sanctify him for it. The weight upon his heart lingers now like a bruise rather than a tightened fist, and he clasps his arms around Gabriel’s neck to pull him fiercely close.

Millennia of butchery and savagery given pause, countless centuries of massacres and cruelty spread behind him but not before. They are who they have always been, one in the same, as Gabriel’s rest becomes Michael’s, and he takes up the blade instead.

He pushes a hand through Gabriel’s hair and clutches it in his fist, pressing their foreheads together, nuzzling beside each other’s nose, seeking a smoldering slow kiss to make their promise hold true.

“I will temper you,” Michael promises. “Protect you from yourself, them from you when passions become unwieldy. I will be you. I am.”

There is a power in words, always, a power in incantations. But souls are bound through more than words and a promise, and souls split must always be resewn together, reminded where they belong, and to whom.

Gabriel’s lips part against Michael’s but he does not kiss him again. Instead, he sighs, low and long, until his mortal form has emptied its lungs, until it feels hollow and empty, and only then, only then, does the essence of his grace shift free. A coiling blue caress against Michael’s skin that has his eyes widening, that has him breathing in enough just to taste the barest tendril of the thing.

His eyes burn brighter for a moment and he bites his lip, shuddering at the sensation of another part of himself returned. They are rarely apart, Gabriel and he, yet there is always a barrier of ribs and sigils keeping them from returning back into a single being.

A steady thud evens the rhythm of his heart. Slowed from straining against the tangle of shame, grief ensnaring him to suffocation, Michael draws a breath and bends. He will listen, now, as he always has, but action and its results are no longer his to ensure. Conveyance and command, between the higher spheres and the earthly, free from the overbearing watch of their Father ensuring the actions of His right hand. Room to breathe, to think.

To protect.

No word finds its way from deep inside him but the one that has always held the most meaning for them both:

“Brother.”

Gabriel’s wings unfurl with a hush of feathers, one knocking over the table beside them, scattering the useless little figures from atop the map. He breathes against Michael, pressing to him, bodies humming together as their hearts beat in sync. It is thrilling, suddenly, to no longer be the one to keep the peace. It is thrilling, suddenly, to know that he can feel blood hot against his hands again, pumped free from a still-beating heart.

“Oh, brother,” he sighs, smile pulling his lips wider before he kisses Michael again and holds him down, enough pressure to feel but not to hurt - this is not about pain, this is not a punishment, this is connection, a shift from one soul to another of one aspect of belief. It is a joining, more intimate than any they could have allowed within their weak human forms.

With a shudder, Gabriel feels Michael empty his lungs in slow sighs against his cheek. With a twitch, another pair of wings unfurl atop the first, curving and protecting, framing them both as Michael’s eyes close and his grace, in turn, returns the piece that Gabriel’s is seeking.

Michael watches through hooded eyes as his brother’s body reflects their joining. They are the same, they are one, but facets of each reflect differently and for the first time, Michael sees himself. Straight, broad shoulders. Jaw set firm. A fire stoking like coals behind dark eyes and heating beneath his skin. Ferocity and loyalty, in equal measure, manifest in Gabriel and Michael’s stomach coils with a sensation he has never known.

Fear.

Not of Gabriel, but for him. For what’s to come and what must be done. For those who he will strike down in endless number and for those whose deaths will weigh heavy as their corpses upon his shoulders. Michael lifts a hand and presses his fingers over Gabriel’s mouth and across his cheek.

Still the Sword and still the Voice, still the Blood and still the Heart. One cannot be without the other, one cannot move but in tandem, as the chariot wheel crushes earth and life beneath steered by the charioteer atop. Framing his brother’s face, Michael closes their lips together in a kiss, and prays for guidance.

A flicker, a flame or a switch or something else entirely and Gabriel shivers against his brother once more. His third pair of wings unfurling, covering them, protecting. Yet they spear outwards, sharp as knives, should anyone come near.

Power and privilege, guilt and wonder, everything flows through them both like a feedback loop, from one to the other through both and sighed free. Gabriel grins and kisses the blood from Michael’s cheek, he plants his wings when Michael attempts to displace him from atop himself and they scuffle, suddenly youthful and alive, each pushing the other to play harder, to be fiercer, each having the other pump through their veins.

“You are a wonder,” Gabriel sighs, pressing to his brother, turning his face against his strong hands. “A blessing and a plague all at once.”

With six successive snaps of feathers against air, Michael unfurls all three pairs of wings in response. His breath fills him now, his sin forgiven and burdens relieved, and he pulls Gabriel towards himself, grinning when Gabriel twists away from his hands. Michael grabs for him again, one wrist caught; he grabs with the other hand, and finds that one held too.

“Yours,” Michael corrects him. His wings push to the floor and bring him to sitting as Gabriel settles over his lap. “I am yours.”

They chase kisses against the other, seeking and twisting away, snaring and avoiding. Michael lets Gabriel hold him, and gasps a laugh when Gabriel shoves him by his wrists to the ground again.

“Father’s going to be furious,” Michael murmurs, wings wide but for where they meet table or tent-pole. “We risk His anger. His wrath. Retribution.”

Gabriel’s smile spreads savage at this. “I welcome any attention He wishes to share with us.”

“And I will remind Him it is He who made us as we are. If He did not wish us to be -”

“- He should not have made it so,” Gabriel whispers. “Already silver-tongued, Michael.”

“No mightier than the sword,” he says. Michael tugs his wrists free just enough to press palm-to-palm with Gabriel instead, their fingers interlacing as he grins. “Show it to me.”

“Crude,” Gabriel purrs against him, turning his head with his brother, synchronized through motion alone, breath for breath, beat for beat of their hearts. “Hungry. That, I see, has yet to change.”

“Should it?”

The older angel grins, pulling his own arms back to guide his twin closer. “You are as Uriel. You find them so curious, so fascinating. You take the time to explore every facet of them through the body you’ve been given.” A brief lick against Michael’s lips and another fierce grin.

“No,” Gabriel tells him. “I hope to see that hunger never sated within you.”

Michael curves closer as Gabriel’s hands span down his back and seek out the belts that hold his armor tight. Through his hair, Michael pushes his fingers and in his wake leaves streaks of scarlet, his palms clear as they pass through.

“You are the only one who ever comes close,” Michael whispers against his brother’s mouth. “And no sooner do you satisfy than I am wanting again,” he says, stealing a kiss. “And again.” Another. “And again.”

A buckle rattles as Gabriel jerks the cinch of Michael’s armor tighter, forcing a gasp from him. He holds Michael bound by it as his little brother flutters kisses across his cheek, and lets the leather drop. The next is pulled tight enough for him to moan. The next finds his skirt caught against his filling cock.

This game between them has always been play, like young animals on earth, testing strength against strength, learning techniques and pushing the other until they push back. But this is a claiming, an allowance of one after years and centuries of friendly tussling.

Gabriel spreads his own thighs wide, enough for Michael to sit down against him, lower, enough for his hands to seek out in front of him for balance, behind himself for a shield against any possible intrusion. He hoists Michael higher against him and kisses his throat, tasting the pulse there that speeds at the sensation, tasting the blood that coats his little brother like a second skin.

“You are radiant,” Gabriel praises him. Michael has always been a merciless, obedient thing. Untameable and proud. He thinks, momentarily, of their fallen brother, banished brother, he thinks of how similar Michael is to him, and how he is entirely Gabriel’s to protect from the same cruel fate.

It will not happen to him.

Michael spreads his knees apart, long legs spread across Gabriel’s lap. A twist of his spine spirals down from his shoulders and juts their cocks together. He watches his brother heavy-lidded and pulls his cuirass off over his head. No armor between them now, not even the stiff woolen tunic that Michael pulls off after. His wings unfurl wide, three sets spanning enough to knock aside a bottle of wine, a table, to nearly take down the tent when his flight wings hit the post.

He doesn’t care who sees them. He never has.

Eager fingers span over Gabriel’s shoulders to work his armor loose in turn, and as Michael works he hums resonant, reverent kisses to Gabriel’s throat. He tastes of iron, not the worn metal flavor of blood, but sharp and freshly-forged. Hot beneath Michael’s tongue, the younger spreads it along Gabriel’s hammer-and-anvil pulse.

When both are bare they hang suspended, a moment, filling the space around them with black wings and with no more between them than blood and flickering firelight. Michael pushes his palms firm up Gabriel’s stomach and follows him to the floor, laying heavy atop and rounding his back to bring their hips together.

“Draw your sword,” Michael whispers, smile spreading, “and thrust me through with it.”

Gabriel snares his brother close, arches him deeper and hums when he feels the warm caress of feathers against his skin, every part of his brother seeking out for him, reaching to feel him warm and there. His hands spread warm down strong thighs, trembling with the grace and power they contain. Gabriel doesn’t spread him further, he doesn’t have to, Michael moves on his own.

He just shifts him closer against him and kisses beneath the sharp clean-shaven jaw.

“Lest someone come and mistreat you,” Gabriel hums, drawing one of his knees up to hold Michael against him. He draws a hand through the feathers of his powerful wings and tilts his own head back as Michael moans and presses his lips to the center of Gabriel’s throat. So responsive and beautiful.

How could he possibly deny him anything?

Gabriel lines himself up with a few quick strokes and rocks up against Michael, deliberate in his slowness, pushing just enough to feel, just enough to have Michael push back.

“Should they try,” Gabriel adds, voice soft against messy matted hair. “They will find themselves envying the hell they so fear.”

Michael huffs a laugh, soft and sweet, against Gabriel’s cheek. A tenderness that the mortal world could never imagine the Archangel of War possesses, a gentleness that only Gabriel could ever know so entirely. The blunt press against his opening works deeper as Michael spreads himself backward, his grin snarling to a grimace before he takes his brother inside himself physically, a mirror to their souls.

And then, sitting back, burying Gabriel inside himself to the hilt, Michael pushes himself upward with hands against his brother’s chest. His lips fall slack on a moan, long lashes fluttering closed against his blood-smeared cheeks. Chest heaving, each breath carrying his voice upon it, Michael works himself forward and back, savoring the friction that threatens to rend him asunder. The sins of mortal indulgences do not apply to them, the wickedness of mankind so below their sphere as to be irrelevant, their concordance of corporal forms is a holy revelation. Bodies joined, souls made whole, voices rising into air still acrid with smoke; Michael’s six wings fan wide and flap rough as he fucks himself on Gabriel’s cock.

Gabriel watches. He takes in the drying blood and shifting muscles, the cuts that heal before his eyes as Michael shifts and arches, sinks back hard and lets his lips part wide in choked-off pleasure. He has always been a greedy lover, exceptionally determined to get his own pleasure, and yet after all was said and done, he would spend an extraordinary amount of time with his partner, preening and grooming and nuzzling close.

Michael knows how to give and take pleasure as he knows how to dole out God’s punishment. 

He is made for it.

Gabriel rocks up, hands splayed wide over his brother’s thighs. He digs his nails in when Michael squirms against him.

“Be still,” Gabriel tells him. “Enjoy your victory.”

Michael makes a little sound, far, far younger than the thousands of years he’s existed - a whine, a whimper, needy and eager. He tries to rock up again and his voice plunges to a moan when Gabriel presses crescent fingernail marks into his legs in warning. His wings tremble, feathers whispering like leaves, and he obeys.

He cannot imagine a time or place in which he would not heed his brother.

Body held taut, Michael’s muscles ripple tightening pleasure as Gabriel moves instead. Nearly pulling out of him, lingering there until Michael’s cheeks are scarlet beneath the drying blood, and then pushing slowly deep again. Michael pries Gabriel’s fingers loose from his legs and brings his hands to his own face, waiting until a forefinger is near to curl his tongue against and drag between his lips to suck.

“Needy thing,” Gabriel whispers, stroking Michael’s face and hair, allowing him to suck one finger, then two between his lips as he continues to arch his hips up and fuck slowly into Michael above him. He will grow impatient, he knows, very quickly. Gabriel can already see the twitching of his wings suggesting the desperate need to shift, he can see the way the feathers fan out and the way the wings curl in on themselves, over and over.

His free hand curls up against Michael’s back and pushes him to arch deeper, drawing fingers through his feathers before snaring a handful and tugging.

Michael shudders, lips parting sticky around the wet fingers in his mouth, and moans. So Gabriel does it again.

Grasping Gabriel’s hand with both his own, a thread of spit joins fingers to lips as Michael pulls him free enough to pant, aching in voice and body as Gabriel fists his feathers. Two pluck free of tender skin and Michael flaps a single broad stroke as he sinks back onto Gabriel’s cock. Only the held wing is still, but the rest drum accompaniment to the twisting undulation of Michael’s body atop his brother.

Gabriel tosses the feathers to the floor, palm smeared with fresh blood now where the blade-edged barbs sliced through his hand. He snares both of Michael’s primary wings around the humerus and grips tight. Their brows press together, their lips curl, every muscle flexing in an undulating rhythm upward from the epicenter of their fucking. Faster, Michael flaps, despite how Gabriel tries to hold him still. Parchments scatter to the floor, and the guttering gaslamp extinguishes.

“And here I thought the fight had gone out of you,” Gabriel growls, seeking to bite Michael’s bottom lip and snapping his teeth when his little brother ducks his head away. “And into me.”

“You have gone into me,” Michael reminds him, planting his hands to Gabriel’s throat to force him back to the ground. Bare skin slaps against bare skin, Michael’s cock dripping thick clear gobs across Gabriel’s belly. “And I will always have a fight left for you.”

“I have taken it from you.”

“And are you not me?”

“I am.”

“We are,” Michael whispers, lips parting against Gabriel’s mouth as a moan pours hot between them and his body jerks still, come gouting thick across his chest.

Only then does Gabriel let him go, allowing Michael’s mighty wings to stretch to their extent, flex and shiver, pound the air once, twice, and settle heavy over them both, as Michael does. He presses shuddering to his brother and Gabriel soothes him, his own hips still rocking up into Michael, shifting him and enjoying him, until, fingers pressing bruises into pale skin, he allows himself release.

Breathless, they cling, feathers and dust and heartbeats between them. Outside, the wind batters the tent but it remains upright. Beyond, they can hear the remains of the slaughter on the two cities. Few left alive, fewer still that will live ‘til morning.

Gabriel turns his nose against Michael’s bloody hair and breathes against him, letting his own heart slow so that Michael’s matches it. Shifting with a murmured curse to let Gabriel slip free, and tucking his wings away, Michael covers his brother with his weight, arms tucked between them, as if to make himself small despite their difference in height. With a patient sigh, Gabriel wraps his arms around his little brother, then one set of wings, then another, then the last.

Surrounded in the quiet dark, Michael hears only his brother’s steady breath and sturdy heart, and the whisper of fingers through his hair. The firmament itself could fall and Gabriel’s wings would shield him. A protector, always, despite the desire for destruction that hisses in his veins like fire and brimstone in blood-choked rivers. A brother, first, despite whatever other roles they take for themselves or each other.

And this, their private paradise, since before their Father spoke light into the world.

How often they have laid just so, with Michael trembling uncertainty against Gabriel’s chest. How many centuries have been spent running a hand down Michael’s back and speaking soft things against his skin. In the eyrie when they settled from work into play into rest. In their youth when the grand scope of the heavens made Michael dizzy and Gabriel closed him away and told him he was silly.

No one else would ever look at Michael and think that.

No one else could ever know him to be.

“I will clean up the mess in the morning,” Michael promises. “Whatever survivors still live. I will let you have the next, but these cities are yet mine to obliterate and if Father has another change of heart and faults me for His commands, I won’t let you take the fall for that.”

Gabriel does not tell Michael that every cruelty he would bear and weather for him gladly, have his wings nailed to the ground in punishment if it meant Michael was unharmed. But he will let him have his cities, he will give him his final ruin, destroying the poor souls who had managed to crawl away from his initial wrath.

He is a terrifying avenger.

“In the morning,” Gabriel agrees, making no move to uncurl his arms or his wings from around them both. They lay warm, together, breathing in time and otherwise unmoving. “Until then, you will sleep. Let your form heal and your wings be preened.”

The word pulls Michael into a closer curl atop his brother, and nuzzling beneath his chin, he smiles. He has caused enough terror today, and found from it not deserved punishment, but an unconditional forgiveness. In the shadows that surround them, Michael tells his brother that he loves him, the only being who would ever hear such a confession.

The only one who has earned it.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have any suggestions or requests for stories, feel free to [toss them our way](http://wwhiskeyandbloodd.tumblr.com/ask)!


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